have filed the suit at the end of may or june. but he has i think he s going to get some traction in this, and it s only going to take one guy, maybe a disgruntled ex-employee, that knows he s never going to work in the nfl again and can come out and affirm what colin kaepernick knows in his heart is happening. because as i told you before, if the owners want to show solidarity to the players and what have you, hire colin kaepernick. roger goodell made calls two years ago to make sure michael graham got drafted by the rams at the time. why doesn t the nfl put pressure on a team to make sure that kaepernick gets signed? if you had a chance to sit down with the president to talk about how he has turned this into something that it s not, what would you say to him? you know what?
again, and i ve said this before and got a little flak for it. but players are not just looking at these racial inequality issues. again, they re looking at the gender pay gap. they re looking at housing discrimination. you will see what players will do in the weeks to come and the nfl is going to give them a platform to do all of this, just as they do breast cancer month and just as they do the military month in november. so that s what the players have been wanting all along is for the nfl and the owners to step up to the plate. they don t want this to be an owners versus players issue. they want the owners to support them in these endeavors. that s easier said than done, because that s what the president has done. he s turned it into an owners versus players. but don, the president was not even brought up today in the meeting from what i heard. he s turned the conversation that way. it wasn t that way until he did it. lee, i m so glad to have you on and i m interested in your
washington, a former nfl player. thank you for joining us. i just want to read a portion from your op-ed on cnn.com. you said, the reality for those of us raising black sons is we pray every time they leave the house they don t become the next hash tag or viral video after an encounter with the police. that s what these protests are about. what trump has done is the worst kind of race-baiting. those are strong words. what are your thoughts behind them? but it s true. you know, the thing is about being a black parent and raising two sons, i have brothers, i have uncles. every black parent has given their son or daughter that talk. we re not asking for anything except to be treated fairly, and to have a level playing field when our sons and daughters and ourselves go out. that has not been the case over the last, you know, i wouldn t
sneakers saying equality on the back of them. what do you think we re going to see this season? i don t think we ll see people taking a knee in the nba. why is that? i think even more important to answer your is that? to answer your question. the coaches. when you see them talking about the president the way they have right from the get go. you are seeing there s a much more attitude of understanding of these issues and i think there s a much more liberal concern, maybe event that would be seen as more liberal anyway and it s been that way a long time. the nba become it s dominated by african-american for so many decades and the nfl as well but not as long as the nba has, i
perspective, because it s unique when you re an agent for a number of players in the nfl. what are you telling what are they telling you about the protests? what do they want to see happen? and what advice are you giving them, if any? i m proud that players have had political consciences and willing to stand up for what they believe? but the symbolism of the protest needs to be followed by action. so now players are starting to think about how, in combination with the league and with owners, they can go into the inner city, put together programs that do early education, that do job retraining, that have interaction with police departments for better community relations. so the question is action now. you probably wouldn t have seen as many protests had not president trump gone ahead and used the language that he did.